by Pam Godwin
“You won’t let me go.” He twisted his arms in the rope. “Even if you tried, you won’t succeed. You’re not in charge.”
“What are you talking about? I’m leading this—”
“Thurney Bridge.”
Her neck went taut. He’d mentioned that before, and she’d looked into it. There was a bridge in France by that name, but she found nothing else. Nothing related to Cole Hartman.
“Five months ago,” he said, “a hitman killed Rylee Sutton’s neighbor, two motel clerks, and when he attempted to kill Rylee, he mentioned Thurney Bridge.”
Vincent Barrington. That corrupt son of a bitch. Putting hits on innocent people? What else was he doing behind her back?
“That wasn’t me.” Her heart pounded. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Your boss was behind it.”
“He’s not my boss.”
“He.”
Shit. She’d just given way another detail. For the love of God, she needed to keep her mouth shut.
“Your boss knows the connection between me, Thurney Bridge, Marie Merivale, and the hard drive,” he said. “That suggests he has access to classified information.”
She pressed her lips together, refusing to confirm or deny.
“So how do you fit in?” He slowly released a breath through his nose. “You posed as a Russian swallow to get hired for this job. Your boss sent you here to capture me and seduce me into talking. Not an uncommon tactic, but complicated. Physical torture would’ve been simpler.”
She shared a look with Mike. Trusting Cole was out of the question, but if she disclosed their strategy, there might still be a way to use him.
“I wasn’t just hired to seduce you into talking.” She met Cole’s steady gaze. “I was hired to seduce the person in possession of the hard drive.”
“So you can steal it.”
“Yes. My employer doesn’t give a fuck how I get it, just as long as it’s in his hands by the end of the year.”
Cole nodded, his expression pensive. “You kept me alive, with all my limbs, because you need me to help you steal it.”
“That would make things easier.”
“I don’t do retrievals of that nature.” He relaxed into the floor, his chest glistening with sweat and scratches from her nails. “I’m not a goddamn thief.”
“I know. That’s why you’re in this position.”
“What do you know about me?”
“For the past seven years, you’ve accepted jobs that involved finding missing persons and information. Information such as secret trafficking routes and criminal headquarters, which often puts you deep in the bowels of cartels and organized crime syndicates. But you’ve never taken a job related to politics or government intelligence. I assume you’re bound by loyalty to your country or some sort of legality related to the job you held in the government. How am I doing so far?”
“Not bad. Your boss gave you this intel?”
“Yes.”
Vincent knew a lot about Cole, but he’d only given her the bare minimum. Without Vincent, she wouldn’t have connected Cole to the hard drive. She wouldn’t have even known he existed.
“You deceived your boss about who and what you are.” Cole inclined his head, eyes tapered. “He believes he hired a sex spy when in reality, you’re here with your own agenda. You don’t intend to deliver the hard drive to him. You want it for yourself.”
A chill swept down her spine, and her neck twisted impulsively toward the exit, her eyes scanning every shadow and nook in the warehouse. If Vincent or his men knew the truth, it was game over.
Vincent thought she didn’t know what was on that hard drive. He believed she and Mike were just here for a paycheck.
“He’s going to kill you,” Cole said, reading her mind.
“Not if I kill him first. Listen to me.” She crouched beside his hip and set a hand on his thigh.
He flinched and bared his teeth, looking for all the world like he wanted to rip her to shreds.
“You hate me. Fine.” Her heart in knots, she removed her touch. “But if we work together, we can survive this.”
“Burn in hell.”
“I’ll pay you. Name your price.” She was talking out of her ass. She had no money. “I’ll pay you whatever you want for your cooperation.”
“What was your exit strategy, Lydia? You seduce me and learn the hard drive’s location. Then what? How were you going to sneak out of here, with me, without giving your boss the information he wants?”
She lowered her gaze to his body, taking in his strength, his sheer muscle mass.
“I see.” Disappointment roughened his voice. “You thought I’d be so blinded by your pussy that I’d lead you out like fucking G.I. Joe, maybe take some bullets for you in the process. And if I survived, I’d be useful in infiltrating the next target.”
“You have powerful friends. Once we get out of here—”
“You want my friends to help you? The same friends you targeted with hellfire?”
“The drone wasn’t armed.”
“Lydia,” Mike growled.
“You were bluffing?” Cole barked out a laugh. “Fucking awesome.” In the next breath, he sobered, his eyes hard as steel. “Give me the name of the motherfucker who’s funding this shit show.”
“He’s—”
In a blur, Mike pounced, swinging the pistol and whipping it across Cole’s head. The smack echoed through the warehouse, leaving Cole knocked out cold.
She gasped. “Why did you do that?”
He turned his furious gaze on her. “You said too much. If you tell him who’s involved, he’ll go after the hard drive himself.”
“That’s what we want.” She grabbed a towel and a bucket of water and knelt beside Cole’s head.
“We want it in the right hands. You know how valuable it is.” He raked his fingers through his hair, yanking at the roots. “Jesus, Lydia. You can’t trust him. You don’t know anything about him.”
She bent down and wiped the wet rag along the gash near Cole’s temple. A trickle of blood fell from the cut, but it would heal cleanly without stitches. Mike knew how to strike with minimal damage.
“I don’t trust him.” She applied pressure to the wound and let her fingers trail down his sculpted face.
Mike’s expression clouded as he watched her. “You trusted him with your ass.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, hurt by the disgust in his tone. “Don’t you dare shame me for that.”
“Lydia.” Sighing, he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not…” He dropped his hand and stared at her with bloodshot eyes. “Look, I get why you did it. Why you let him…” His stance widened, shifting with the weight of his frustration. “Just tell me you’re not falling for him.”
“What?” She blinked. Then choked out a laugh. “No. God. This is bigger than me, Mike. It’s bigger than us.”
“I know.” His eyes narrowed on her hands in Cole’s hair.
“Good grief.” She tossed the towel in the bucket and stood, staring down at Cole’s limp body. “He beat me at my own game. I seduced him. He seduced me. He won. That’s all this is. I don’t know the extent of his skill set, but I can tell you this. He’s a master at reading people. He knew how to strip me down and make me talk before I had a clue what was happening. But he doesn’t know everything. We can let him go. Let him live.”
“Lydia.”
“We’re a lot of things, but we’re not murderers. If we leave him here, he’s dead.” Her chest squeezed. “He’s never going to talk. He’ll let them kill him first.”
“This is so fucked.” He paced away with his hands clasped behind his neck. “We’re not giving up.”
“Never.” Her pulse quickened, her voice breathless.
“All right. Go back to the room.” He squatted beside Cole and reached for the jeans. “I’ll dress him and return him to the cell.”
“What if he tries to talk to the guards? I
f he tells them what he knows…?”
He flashed a menacing smile. “I’ll gladly knock his ass out again.”
Lydia dozed off. She hadn’t meant to close her eyes, but when she opened them, a rude buzzing crashed through her grogginess.
“Fuck!” She scrambled off the mattress and stumbled through the room, hunting the vibrating sounds of her phone.
Where the hell was Mike? He should’ve returned by now.
She spotted the buzzing device on the table amid the clutter of cosmetics. Snatching it up, she gasped at the time. Jesus, she’d slept for two hours?
Because…Cole. He’d put her body through the wringer and mangled her emotions. But she couldn’t think about that now. The unknown caller wasn’t going to be happy about waiting through five rings. Six.
“Yes?” She hacked the greeting from the back of her throat, overly conscious about her fake accent. “You need something?”
“Change of plans.” Vincent’s high-pitched drawl set her teeth on edge. “I’m moving up the deadline.”
“You can’t do that.” She tightened her hand around the phone, making it creak. “We had a deal.”
“It’s already done. The team is extracting the information now, and once they have it, they’ll pass it along to you. Then you will retrieve the package. Maybe your cunt will be more effective on the next target.”
Her blood pressure hit the roof, and she reached out a hand, catching herself on the table, attempting to steady her legs and quash the panic in her voice.
“Whatever,” she said with as much boredom as she could summon. “The payment doesn’t change.”
“You’ll get your money. Just don’t fuck this up.”
“I’m very good at my job.”
“You keep saying that. Yet you’ve produced nothing.”
“I delivered him here.”
“Yeah, all right, I’ll give you that.” He hardened his tone, which succeeded only in making him sound whiny. “You will stay out of the way until the others get the information you need. Then you will finish this. Understood?”
He expected her to sit here while they butchered and killed Cole.
Yeah, whatever you say, boss.
She swallowed down her rising fury. “Yes.”
He disconnected.
She’d never met him in person, and maybe she never would. But as she tossed the phone and dragged on a pair of black jeans, she vowed that, before she surrendered her last breath, she would witness the glorious annihilation of Vincent Barrington.
Quickly, she pulled on a white t-shirt, combat boots, and checked her appearance in the mirror. The false eyelashes barely hung on. Black eyeliner melted down her cheeks and smeared into her blush. Bright red lipstick slanted over her chin as if streaked by a river of drool.
She looked like a redheaded Harley Quinn, freshly fucked, one-hundred-percent psychotic, and ready to party.
Yeah, her makeup was utterly ruined—thank you, Cole—but it still did its job. It hid her true face.
On her way out, she grabbed a handgun, slid in a full magazine, and clipped a spare mag on her hip. Then she took off down the hall.
Passing the break room, she counted four guys gathered around the table eating and drinking beer. She slipped by unnoticed and turned the corner, pausing at the bathroom. Two men inside. She intersected two more farther down the corridor.
One of them stopped her. “Where are you going?”
“I need a shower.” She gave him a look. “That’s not an invite.”
He held up his hands and backed away, smirking as his eyes drifted down her body.
“The warehouse is all yours, honey.” He turned and paced off in the opposite direction.
Had he just come from there? God, she hoped Cole was still in his cell, and Mike was keeping guard.
As she measured her steps, trying to appear calm, Vincent’s words coiled in her belly.
The team is extracting the information now.
That could mean anything, but her mind conjured knives cutting through flesh, extracting bones, organs, and any part of Cole that would bring out the answer.
By the time she burst into the warehouse, she was sweating and out of breath.
Silence surrounded her, thrashing in her ears. No one was here. She spun toward Cole’s cell.
The door stood open. He was gone.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Where the hell was he?
Where was Mike? Was he in trouble? If Vincent’s men overheard her conversation with him, if they were hurting him…
Horror glued her boots to the floor. Terror pulled through her gut. A helpless void resonated in her chest.
The loading dock.
It was the only place they could be. Unless Cole and Mike were taken somewhere. Somewhere she would never find them.
She raced out of the warehouse, down the eerily quiet corridor, toward the dock.
What if it was a trap? Were they waiting for her to come running? Had they figured out why she was here?
Her eyes darted behind her, expecting one of the doors to open and hands to shoot out.
Paranoia pushed her harder, and dread dug in its claws. She wrestled with it, fighting it down, burying it deep enough to control her breathing. Then she forced herself to holster the weapon in her waistband. She couldn’t burst in with guns blazing. Not without giving herself away.
At the entrance to the loading dock, she pulled in another calming breath and opened the door.
Voices drew her attention to the far side. She flattened her back to the wall, remaining out of view. Then she peered around the corner.
Alec stood beside a massive machine, his attention on the cast-iron bridge that rose overhead, twenty feet in length, with steel pillars supporting each end. She didn’t know anything about the tools required for cutting stone into grave markers, but it didn’t take a genius to understand how this one worked.
Suspended from the center of its bridge was a circular saw, at least six feet in diameter. Rusty, broken teeth fringed the outer edge. It was large enough to cut blocks of granite into narrow slabs.
Or human bodies into little messy slivers.
She worked her throat against a knot of fear.
The machine didn’t function. None of the junk left behind was operational. Unless someone had fixed it? Was there a mechanic on the team?
“What’s it going to be?” Alec folded his arms across his chest. “Your hands? Or your feet? Or you can keep your extremities and tell us the location of the hard drive.”
Her shoulders bunched to her ears, and her heart landed somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach. She silenced her breathing and leaned forward, straining for a better look.
Five men stood around the machine, including Alec. And Mike.
A vein of relief swept through her.
Angled slightly away from her position, Mike rested his hands in his pockets, exuding the appearance of cool indifference. But she knew him.
She knew his shoulders held too much stiffness. His neck elongated with the tensing of muscles, and trenches rutted his hair from his fingers repeatedly pushing through it. He was anything but relaxed.
He was also the only man not armed.
Alec and the others must’ve taken him by surprise, and now he was pretending to go along with this to avoid raising alarms. This being the torture of Cole Hartman.
Cole lay on the platform beneath the giant circular saw, his body restrained to the steel structure. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.
“We’ll start with your hands, then.” Alec flicked a lever on the machine.
An ear-splitting screech cracked the air, springing the rusty saw to life and making her jump.
No, no, no!
She stared in horror as Alec hit another switch and lowered the enormous whirring blade. Cole’s arm lay two feet beneath it, trapped in rope. He didn’t struggle or twitch a muscle. The fucking asshole was just going to lie there and let that saw take his hand.
Mike’s shadowed eyes flicked back and forth, lingering on the men’s holstered guns. He was going to attempt something. Something stupid like swiping one of their weapons. Dammit, he was going to get himself shot.
Perspiration formed on her spine.
At the speed in which the blade lowered, she only had seconds.
A huge breath filled her lungs as she drew her weapon. Then she bolted forward, the sound of her approach swallowed by the chest-rattling squeal of the machine.
Alec spotted her first, his brows leaping to his hairline. Twenty-feet away, she fired.
Missed.
Fucking shit! She sprinted forward. He reached for his gun.
Fifteen-feet. She shot again and hit him in the chest. He dropped instantly.
The need to gasp set her lungs on fire, but she couldn’t draw air. Adrenaline spiked her blood as she set her sights on the remaining three.
Their guns, already drawn, turned toward her as the spinning blade continued its descent, the toothy edge blurring inches from Cole’s arm.
All at once, Mike grabbed one of the men, and a bullet fired, whizzing past her ear as she squeezed the trigger.
Over and over, she shot off rounds, charging forward and blowing through the magazine until the only man left standing was Mike.
Without taking a breath, she fell upon the machine and smacked the lever. Her heart stopped, waiting in agony as the motor ground to a soundless halt, freezing the circular saw.
The blade sat against Cole’s sinewy forearm, drawing a bead of blood around the serrated, rust-colored edge. So goddamn close, and he never struggled. Never moved a muscle.
Her pulse pounded as she dragged her eyes over the rest of him. Boots, dirty jeans, powerful legs, shredded abs, tattooed chest and arms, and a scraggly beard that only enhanced his intimidating, masculine appearance.
No visible injuries.
“Other than the cut,” she said, quickly flipping the switch to lift the blade, “you’re not harmed?”
His silence pulled her gaze to his, and lord have mercy, those molten brown eyes imprisoned her, suffocated her, and refused to let go. He was so beautiful, so utterly unruffled and fearless, just watching her, breathing calmly, alive.
